Assessing the Relative Impacts of Gender and Educational Levels on the Moral Foundations of the Students

Abstract

The study examined the impacts of gender and levels of education on harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity dimensions of moral foundations. One hundred ninety two male (MAge = 20.95, SDAge = 2.11) and 197 female (MAge = 20.74, SDAge = 2.05) graduates and postgraduates took part in this study. The moral foundations of the participants were measured with the help of Moral Foundation Questionnaire (Graham, Haidt, ; Nosek, 2009). The findings of the study showed that the male and female participants did not differ significantly in their mean scores on the five dimensions of moral foundations. The male graduate and postgraduate students also did not differ significantly. Contrarily, the female undergraduate participants achieved significantly higher mean scores on fairness/reciprocity and in-group/loyalty dimensions of moral foundations as compared to their female postgraduate counterparts, whereas these two groups did not differ significantly on the rest of the measures. Irrespective of gender, the undergraduate participants achieved statistically higher mean scores on fairness/reciprocity and in-group/loyalty. The hierarchical regression also exhibited that gender and educational levels of the participants contributed significantly to five components of moral foundations. It was explicit that education accounted for significant variations in the scores of fairness-reciprocity and ingroup-loyality. The main effects of educational levels for fairness-reciprocity and ingroup-loyality were significant. In addition, the interaction effects of gender and educational levels were also significant for fairness-reciprocity. The findings evinced that educational level of the participants played an important role in shaping some of the dimensions of moral foundations. The findings have been discussed in the light of extant theoretical and empirical findings of moral foundations. The conclusions of the study have significant implications for understanding moral behaviours of various groups. The limitations and future directions for the researchers have also been highlighted.